Electronic messaging, particularly electronic mail (“e-mail”) over the Internet, has became quite pervasive in society. Its ease of use, low cost, and integration with common office computer tools and business process work-flow make it a preferred method of communication for many individuals and organizations.
Unfortunately, as has occurred with more traditional forms of communication, such as a postal mail and telephone, e-mail recipients are being subjected to unsolicited mass mailings. With the explosion, particularly in the last few years, of Internet-based commerce, a wide and growing variety of electronic merchandisers are repeatedly sending unsolicited mail advertising their products and services, “phishing” for confidential information, pump-and-dump of small cap equities, transmission of an wanted or malicious software, other nefarious or unknown motivations. Most consumers who order products or otherwise transact with a merchant over the Internet expect to and, in fact, do regularly receive such solicitations from those merchants. However, electronic mailers are continually expanding their distribution lists to penetrate deeper into society in order to reach more people. In that regard, recipients who merely provide their e-mail addresses in response to requests for visitor information generated by various web sites, often later find that they have been included on electronic distribution lists. This occurs without the knowledge, let alone the assent, of the recipients. Moreover, as with postal direct-mail lists, an electronic mailer will often disseminate its distribution list, whether by sale, lease or otherwise, to another such mailer for its use, and so forth with subsequent mailers. Further, given the low cost of sending an e-mail message, automated processes which randomly generate e-mail addresses to existing domains, or derive e-mail addresses from various lists or databases, send massive floods of messages. Consequently, over time, e-mail recipients often find themselves increasingly barraged by unsolicited mail resulting from separate distribution lists maintained by a wide variety of mass mailers or spammers. Though certain avenues exist through which an individual might request that their name be removed from most e-mail lists from legally compliant entities, many sources of e-mail are not compliant, or use “loop-holes” in existing regulation.
Various proposals and systems have been implemented to generate “white lists” and “black lists” of individual senders, IP address, or domains. However, the normal e-mail protocols are susceptible to “spoofing”, and therefore an analysis of the e-mail message may not properly reflect its origin. Likewise, spam may be sent from “zombie” machines, and thus exploit the infrastructure owned by others, who may be “white listed”. Further, new domains are constantly being added, and thus a simple list-based filter generally precludes normal delivery of many messages that would be authorized by the recipient, and thus suffers from a very high false positive reject rate. Likewise, the spoofing of valid addresses raises the possibility, at least, of false negative rejections. This unsolicited mail usually increases over time. The sender can effectively block recipient requests or attempts to eliminate this unsolicited mail. For example, the sender can prevent a recipient of a message from identifying the sender of that message (such as by sending mail through a proxy server). This precludes that recipient from contacting the sender in an attempt to be excluded from a distribution list. Alternatively, the sender can ignore any request previously received from the recipient to be so excluded.
An individual can easily receive hundreds of pieces of unsolicited postal mail in less than a year. By contrast, given the extreme ease and insignificant cost through which e-distribution lists can be readily exchanged and e-mail messages disseminated across extremely large numbers of addresses, a single e-mail addressee included on several distribution lists can expect to receive a considerably large number of unsolicited messages over a much shorter period of time.
Furthermore, while many unsolicited e-mail messages are benign, such as offers for discount office or computer supplies or invitations to attend conferences of one type or another; others, such as pornographic, inflammatory and abusive material, are highly offensive to their recipients. All such unsolicited messages, whether e-mail or postal mail, collectively constitute so-called “junk” mail. To easily differentiate between the two, junk e-mail is commonly known, and will alternatively be referred to herein, as “spam”.
Similar to the task of handling junk postal mail, an e-mail recipient may sift through his/her incoming mail to remove the spam. United States Patent Application 20040083270 (Heckerman, David; et al., Apr. 29, 2004) provides an intelligent, content-sensitive filtering process which responds to user feedback. See also, US 20040139160, 20040139165, 20040177110, 20040215977, expressly incorporated herein by reference. Simple (concrete) email filter classification systems are known. See, 20040193684, 20040199595, 20040210639, 20040205127, 20040205126, 20040210640 expressly incorporated herein by reference.
Drawbacks of many prior art systems and methods are that these systems either take time to setup and configure, or they do not allow the user sufficient flexibility to personalize the email filter.
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The systems, methods and concepts disclosed in the above patents and patent applications may be used in conjunction with, or appropriate components substitute for and/or supplement the elements of the preferred embodiment of the invention disclosed herein-below, to the extent consistent therewith.
In light of the foregoing, there exists a need to provide a system and method that will enable the identification and classification of spam versus desired e-mail. Furthermore, there exists a need for a method of quickly and easily configuring and controlling the spam filter while still enabling the user to personalize the spam filter if they so desire, to further facilitate appropriately-restrictive filtering criteria while permitting appropriate and/or authorized e-mail to be delivered. Further there exists a need for a system and method of filtering spam that functions with minimal configuration while minimizing the false positive reject rate and protecting emails from desired senders from being lost.